“Western racism is its DNA”: Talk by Palestinian scholar Saree Makdisi on genocide in Gaza

On Wednesday, March 19, Dr. Saree Makdisi presented at Western University for a public lecture titled, “Gaza and the Question of Palestine.” 

 

Dr. Makdisi is the Chair of the Department of English at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), a prominent scholar of romantic literature, and public intellectual who authored Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (2008) and Tolerance is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (2022). 

 

He is also the nephew of the late scholar Edward Saïd, who is responsible for foundational work in postcolonial theory. Saïd’s seminal work, Orientalism (1979) describes the West’s mythic invention of an inferior Oriental “other” to justify violent colonial rule. This academic lineage is clear in Dr. Makdisi’s work on Palestine. 

 

“Israel may think that it’s all powerful, and it talks all the time as if it’s above all law. It is in fact merely a something of Frankenstein’s monster, assembled from the spare parts and archaic leftovers of Western colonialism and its hateful ideologies. Western racism is its DNA. Western support lights up its nervous system. Western funding animates its limbs. Western technologies are its tools. The accumulated horror of four centuries of Western colonial violence and its lingua franca sputters its essence,” says Dr. Makdisi. 

 

Paradox of Western Liberalism 

 

The psychological structuring of Western liberalism and tolerance is predicated on a shaky paradox that is violently confronted in the question of Palestine. For Palestinians to exist and be subject to the continued onslaught of the genocidal State of Israel, Western ‘benevolence’ is tantamount to planting foundation on the ground of death and foreclosure of liberalism. 

 

While there is a growing distance between public opinion and the Zionist project, Western governments continue to fund and support the genocide. 

 

“Normal people have a very clear sense of what’s going on. You don’t need a PhD to figure out when you see these scenes who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s obvious at a glance. Whereas our governments are subject to different kinds of preservation of interests,” says Dr. Makdisi. 

 

“After weeks of trying one maneuver after another to derail ongoing ceasefire negotiations, the Israelis have resumed their genocidal project in Gaza. A project that never really ended but had merely morphed into a new form since the ceasefire went into effect in January.” 

 

Israel has consistently refused to facilitate the delivery of food, healthcare materials, and other essential services. It continued to bomb Gaza, including during pre-dawn Ramadan prayers. In the first hours of the renewed bombardment, Israel killed over 500 people, including 174 children, and injured hundreds more. 

 

“What we are witnessing though is not simply gratuitous killing for the sake of killing. But rather, the expression of the absolutely consistent fanatical politics of Zionism,” adds Dr. Makdisi. 

 

Palestinians who have been forcibly displaced are subject to the orders at the whims of the Israeli government which seeks to undermine all facets of Palestinian existence, including its material foundations. 

 

The racial order of the colonial system is made explicit by the Israeli army’s Orientalist fascination with subjugating the Palestinian people—all in the service of the US led Western imperial project. 

 

Witnessing Genocide 

 

Members of the Israeli army have taken to documentation of their genocidal war crimes on personal social media accounts. The videos and photos are posted with the full knowledge that they do so with impunity. When both State and society supports genocidal actions, there shall be no consequences for its flaunting. 

 

Public polling of Jewish Israelis continues to show overwhelming support for the violence perpetrated by the Israeli army. There have been no hard efforts to capture government officials publicly pledging to cut off food, water, and medicine to Gaza. An open calling for the annihilation of Gaza and everyone in it is the norm. 

 

“They had a discussion in the Israeli parliament last summer as to whether the raping of Palestinian prisoners was acceptable. And they concluded, yes, it’s perfectly permissible. There are no limits. All in public. None of this is behind closed doors,” says Dr. Makdisi. 

 

So, how is there still denial of genocide in the Western world when all evidence of genocidal intent is available? This, in the face of the first genocide to be live-streamed by its victims, and shared openly by its perpetrators, available for anyone to witness. 

 

Yet, since October 7, there has been deliberate ignorance by many Western liberals. Beyond many overtly racist perspectives, ordinary people who would typically advocate for gender and racial equality and are motivated by concerns about climate change exhibit this same ignorance of the brutal assault on Palestinians. 

 

“What we see with these people is not heartlessness. They clearly have plenty of heart. But it is one manifestation of the culture of denial. The reason these people do not see or hear Palestinian suffering is that they really do not see or hear it. They are far too intent and far too focused on the suffering of people with which they can readily identify. People who seem more just like themselves,” explains Dr. Makdisi. 

 

Their over-identification with the Zionism is a shift in sympathetic focus to the subject they recognize. In being appalled about protests against genocide rather than the genocide itself, the culture of denial manifests through forms of occlusion. 

 

Culture of Denial 

 

How does the Western liberal subject reconcile supporting the Zionist project for decades given the face of current atrocities? Through two interconnected forms of denial. 

 

Firstly, the negative denial that refuses facts and narratives. This is undoubtedly enabled by Western mainstream media. It’s harder to sustain because of the mounting documented evidence, and there is no basis for the elaboration of the individual self to reconcile their progressive values with Zionism. 

 

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, there is positive denial that nourishes the dark history of the State of Israel. After the demolition of Palestinian homes, mosques, cemeteries, and indigenous agriculture in the Nakba of 1948, forests were planted over the ruins. Denial can be sustained and maintained when there is silence about the destruction and public fanfare over re-forestation. It emphasizes the values of creation and 'makes the desert bloom’, thereby transforming the ethnic cleansing for the Western subject to positively affirm the settler colonial project. 

 

This culture of denial is where we locate the institutional violence against encampments at universities across North America. It is also necessary for the preservation of the chain of dependency to maintain the State of Israel. The genocide is enabled by the United States in both physical materials and justifications, and also, political and diplomatic cover. 

 

Zionism as Larger Western Colonialism 

 

Palestinian resistance is the first anti-colonial struggle in history that is not just fighting against its own oppressive colonial power, but additionally against each power of the larger Western colonial system. 

 

According to international law, war is between armies of two sovereign states. Headlines have been distorted through deliberate choices to help preserve the Western liberal interest in the Zionist colonial project. The onslaught against dissenting voices in academic institutions, the dehumanization of Arabs and prevention of their self-expression, are all deliberate strategies for preserving the culture that permits genocide. 

 

Aside from its exceptional violence, Israeli Zionism revolves around a socially and psychologically destructive paradigm. This is in the saturation of occupation as everyday life for Palestinians. Prior to and especially since October 7, this has been an endurance of accumulation of slow and everyday violence. 

 

The Zionist project is inextricable from the killing of Palestinians and the destruction and demolition of Palestine. Its leaders and proponents are unabashed about acknowledging this. The documentation on social media by Palestinians and members of the Israeli army alike have allowed an unprecedented witnessing. 

 

*Thanks to Najah Kishawi for the lecture transcript